Mastodawn

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/116103661147175039

Mekka's take on the methodological implications on the (lack of) cross-tabs on this study are on point, but there's another thing to look at here: our definition of "platforming". So much discussion of "platforming" is conducted from the perspective of "are these ideas dangerous, is it OK to let people hear these dangerous ideas". That's not what is happening. The speech acts involved are not "conveying ideas" and letting people analyze them.

One way to look at this is to say "oh, algorithmic feeds make people more racist" but the way that attitudes are being measured, the entire way that attitudes *work*, is actually showing something different here: what algorithmic feeds do is *allow racists to efficiently find each other*. "platforming" in this context is not allowing people to hear racist ideas, it is allowing people to *build a command and control network for white supremacist violence*.

If nazis are dropping bombs on you by flying planes that communicate by radio, blowing up their ground control radio towers or jamming their radio signals is not "censorship". Similarly, deplatforming is not about preventing their "dangerous ideas" from winning in the "marketplace of ideas", it is about disrupting their communications so they cannot organize and build power to kill people.

Freedom of speech is important and I do believe that we need to be careful when we punish people for speaking. But the american left needs to contend with the cold hard fact that Fox News needs to be made illegal *somehow*. We have seen the results, the violence and death which is the result of this "speech". The right has been dancing on the line of the Brandenburg test for decades now: causing violence with speech, then pretending they couldn't have known the violence would be caused by it

Coming up with a standard that properly disrupts what "X, The Everything App™", or Fox News, or innumerable "influencers" have been doing for the last 20 years, without creating a tool that allows police violence against the left for advocating for UBI or something, is going to be a risky legal challenge, but if we get through this presidency with a country that still has some semblance of the rule of law intact, there is no way around the fact that that project is *necessary*.

To put a fine point on it, I think that we can do this without changing much about 1A law. While I don't think that 1A precedent is holy scripture that we can never modify, if we *can* preserve that status quo it is both less effort and also less dangerous.

What is necessary is an understanding of causality for Brandenburg that is more sophisticated than that of a 5-year-old's. You can incite violence without pointing at a specific person and saying "hey, you, do violence right now".

Cassandra is only carbon now Feb 20

@glyph I also think there's a more-is-different style argument that can be made in 1A cases. To be slightly pithy about it, freedom of speech shouldn't imply freedom to have military-grade megaphones.

@xgranade Citizens United is indeed considerably more problematic than Brandenburg

Cassandra is only carbon now Feb 20

@glyph Like, my beliefs here are nuanced, in that I think banning Fox News is both necessary for survival and that banning what is ostensibly a news network quite obviously threatens freedom of the press, if not free speech. But the problem as I think of it is that, irrespective of whether Fox News is actually news or not, they have a massive reach that's truly disproportionate with respect to what "press" might have meant in early "freedom of the press" arguments.

Cassandra is only carbon now

@glyph If Fox News were the size of a local newspaper and didn't have immediate access to hospital waiting rooms, airport terminals, and millions of racist uncles, I might feel differently about them. But then, should governments really be deciding how large is too large, and if no, then can we survive the consequences of that?

Really, it comes down to that I think 1A is far too blunt of an instrument to resolve the problems of modern megacorporate media.

cthos 🐱Feb 20

@xgranade @glyph Fairness Doctrine has entered the chat ™️

Cassandra is only carbon now Feb 20

@cthos @glyph hoooooooo boy

cthos 🐱Feb 20

@xgranade @glyph I’m shitposting don’t mind me

Zack Weinberg Feb 20

@xgranade @glyph Antitrust regulations used to include a "not allowed to own more than N local news outlets" rule, where N was something like 3

If you put me in charge I'd bring back that rule and also put a hard cap on the number of employees any single org is allowed to have. Order of 10,000 for that one, I think. Maybe even lower.

phildini Feb 23

@xgranade @glyph someone below already mentioned antitrust, but I think there's also grounds on considerations of freedoms.

Ie, the environment that Fox News is creating limits the material freedoms of certain groups, and so the govt does have a remit to act, if it chooses.

Cassandra is only carbon now Feb 23

@phildini @glyph Yeah, the Paradox of Tolerance keeps rearing its ugly head all over the place. Naive ideas of freedom, while important, just don't survive contact with terrible people all that well.

@phildini @xgranade @glyph

a possible solution would be, rather than plain banning them, pursuing criminal cases against them. Free speech doesn't mean speech free from consequences.